Many of my watercolors are small and intimate; others are big enough that it feels like you could walk into the picture. In this medium, I use tiny brushes to create the patterned surfaces of the landscapes. I find inspiration for these pieces in daily life and in my travels, in textiles, gardens, aboriginal art, landforms, flowers and trees.

“The more actively configured Houck's surfaces are, the more her strengths of color and shape organization come to the fore. Big, spacious planes simply do not work in her vocabulary. Once we enter Houck's pictures, reminders of the spaces of our real world would be intrusive—better to take these lumpy, wiggly mounds of earth and spiky five-fingered palm trees on their own terms of decorative form and droll narrative." Meredith Fife Day, Art New England